MVP Architecture

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Building Hummingbird as a decentralised physical‑infra network (DePIN) only works if the charging-station hardware can be replicated cheaply enough for community hosts to amortise their costs through network rewards.

This section explains how we will stand‑up an MVP network that proves the Hummingbird fly‑wheel without locking ourselves into a closed OEM ecosystem.

Build‑path options considered

	Option 1 - Open-hardware prototype	Option 2 - Off-the-shelf enterprise drones
Stack	Holybro kit + ArduPilot + Jetson Orin Nano + Custom Dock Station	Skydio X10 + X10 Dock, or DJI M30/4D + Dock 3
Estimated Charging Station cost in production (excl. design)	~ $ 5,000 (miner)	~ $ 10,000 (DJI Dock 2)
Estimated Drone cost in production (excl. design)	~ $ 2,000 (hummingbird)	~ $ 7,000 (DJI Matrice 3D RGB) + SDK licenses
Programmability & Autonomy	Full MavLink access; we own firmware, computer vision, and charging station handshake	Limited to vendor cloud APIs; little or no low-level control
Regulations Compliance	ArduPilot firmware already implements Remote ID and Obstacle Avoidance (ADS-B). However, we'll need to self-certify the airframe and charging system for Part 107 ops	Skydio X10 and DJI Enterprise families ship with built-in Remote ID and certifications out of the box
Scalability / DePIN fit	Open hardware + open autopilot aligns with “community-owned infra” narrative and lets you publish reference designs miners can replicate	Closed ecosystems create a vendor choke-point and undermine the decentralisation story; station owners are effectively captive to OEM terms
Exit-to-production	Requires a Phase 2 redesign: harden the airframe, certify Li-ion packs, ruggedize dock	Already field-hardened, but we inherit OEM road-map risk and margin compression

We decided on Option 1 because it maximises the decentralisation narrative, keeps cap-ex for station hosts under $5 k, and lets us embed on-chain identity right down at the silicon layer. Off-the-shelf “drone-plus-dock” systems are either back-ordered (Skydio) or politically risky to import (DJI), and their closed APIs would shackle our community hosts to OEM clouds. Our open-hardware kit ships today and avoids those lock-ins—setting the stage for a truly community-owned network.

End‑to‑End MVP architecture

MVP Architecture

End users book flights through the Hummingbird Cloud, whose frontend pushes mission commands to the drones and receives real-time telemetry via WebSocket.

In the air, each prototype drone is a Development drone running open-source ArduPilot, topped with a companion computer that handles autonomy, cloud communication, and a DID-based machine-identity handshake with the dock.

On the roof, a miner-owned docking station pairs a Raspberry Pi controller with a charging circuit; the Pi talks to the Jetson over Bluetooth and/or WiFi and relays “proof-of-service” receipts to the same EVM chain that logs the drone’s DID authentication.

Successful proofs of service (liveness, parking, charging) trigger on-chain reward distribution back to the miner, closing the DePIN fly-wheel while keeping every critical link—aircraft firmware, edge compute, and charging hardware—fully open and vendor-agnostic.